Why culture and language matter
My friend Eric Blaisdell painted these drawings when he was teaching English in Japan to show important it is to learn cultural norms when in a foreign country. In the case of the clueless...
Covid ain’t no hoax
Behind every Covid hospitalization or death statistic, you will find many people like me who are the family members, friends, colleagues, or neighbors of somebody who is hospitalized with Covid. Those who couldn’t be...
Covid no es una broma (Español/Spanish)
Detrás de cada estadística de muerte o hospitalización de Covid, hay muchas personas como yo, que son familiares, amigos, colegas o vecinos de alguien que está hospitalizado con Covid. Aquellos que no pudieron estar...
La Covid n’est pas une fake news (Français/French)
Derrière chaque statistique d'hospitalisation ou de décès Covid, vous trouverez de nombreuses personnes comme moi qui ont un membre de la famille, un ami, un collègue ou un voisin hospitalisé avec la Covid. Ceux...
Political barriers shouldn’t be linguistic barriers
I was recently in the former Yugoslavia as an election observer in Macedonia and was pleasantly surprised at how I was able to use Serbo-Croatian to communicate with various people: a Slovenian diplomat, an...
Teaching language learning in areas marred by ethnic violence
The odd irony of giving three presentations about language learning in a city that saw 450 people killed last year in ethnic violence was not lost on me. Via the US Embassy, I was...
Covid nije prevara (Bosanski/Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian)
Iza svake hospitalizacije od COVID-a ili statistike o smrti, pronaći ćete ljude kao što sam ja – članove porodice, prijatelje, kolege ili komšije. Sve nas koji ne možemo biti kraj samrtne postelje onih koje...
It ain’t no hoax: Covid Public Service Announcement in 8 languages
I made a playlist of videos in 8 languages with a public service announcement about how Covid is robbing people of their dignity in death.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm6thK2LTrSnajn9mYuzwBzCXUjztTp30
Intro video text:
Hi! My name is Susanna Zaraysky. You might...
Bride kidnapping in Central Asia, Is an English speaking woman less likely to be...
Talking about learning English using music and media at the American Corner, Kant, Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz flag on wall.
In the past year, I’ve been paying more attention to reaching out to girls...
Don’t fault innovative musicians!
Instead of criticizing people who are risk takers, we should be applauding their efforts because if we don’t innovate, these languages are going to die.
